An ambitious US$6.5m refurbishment of the nine studios, control rooms, Master Control Room (MCR) and Central Apparatus Room serving Bahrain Radio’s seven stations has been completed during lockdown. Taking the broadcaster from its 1980 origins into present-day IP operation.
At the centre of the new technology infrastructure is Lawo-based Madi architecture that covers all seven on-air studios and also allows the control room to serve as a self-operating studio.
With an accompanying revamp of studio acoustics, studio furniture and the radio library, the work was overseen by Dubai-based systems integrator GloCom at the direction of Bahrain’s Ministry of Information Affairs (MIA). As well as design of the new systems, GloCom also handled decommissioning of the old equipment infrastructure, migration of the studios and training despite Covid-19 challenges,
‘Bahrain Radio is one of many projects the MIA has completed in recent months, with more due for completion this year and next,’ says MIA Assistant Undersecretary for Technical Affairs, Eng Abdulla Ahmed Abalooshi. ‘Much of this renovation has been possible through to the support of Prince Salman bin Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, Crown Prince and Prime Minister of Bahrain.
‘Our studios were really old, and we used to have the occasional breakdown with no support available for them. With this project, we have transferred our entire radio technology to a digital platform and have added elements that will make life easier for the production people in our radio department.
As well as being equipped with Lawo sapphire broadcast consoles, the on-air studios can also be connected to two of the production studios for music or drama. A third production studio has been redesigned for mix-mastering. All seven on-air studios are designed to enable any FM station to log in and go live from any studio.
The MCR includes an automation system capable of supporting 15 FM stations with full redundancy, enabling the broadcaster room for future expansion. It also includes four 80-inch LED walls, Lawo’s Vistool for audio monitoring and Lawo Virtual Studio Manager (VSM) control. A ket aspect of the project was the replacement of a legacy Dalet system, with radio automation from RCS.
All of the studios are linked to the MCR through fibre with physical AES/ANA cables for redundancy. The Central Apparatus Room was also designed with a central Madi audio router from Lawo.
‘This project was contracted to us in October 2019, but Covid-19 resulted in severe challenges in terms of shipments, permits to work on-site and so on – but we worked closely with the customer and our logistics team to circumvent this,’ says GloCom President and Chairman, Zahid Mirza. ‘There were also technical and operational complexities for GloCom to address, as the channels were on air. Shifting one studio system to the other and ensuring people were happy with the set-up and removing the bulk of spaghetti wire was quite challenging.’
One of the larger challenges GloCom encountered was managing the workflow of the Quran station. ‘With our highly qualified engineers, and with support of the MIA team, we achieved that without an operator. With the successful integration of the RCS automation and Lawo, all the stations played the adhan [call to prayer] on time for one calendar year, without any delay.’
Despite all of these obstacles, the project was completed on schedule.
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